Monday, January 04, 2016

RBox - Remotely Deployed GSM SIM Management

As I discussed earlier in my previous post, one of the use cases of RBox is for management of remotely deployed GSM-sim card for sending/receiving sms. You might wonder why would someone deploy their Sim card in a remote location rather than inserting it in a phone and keeping it close to your body. Well, there are many reasons why remotely deployed sim card would make sense, so far I could think of following reasons(do let me know in comments section if there are other use cases).

When on international travel, your sim-card may not have roaming feature enabled.

You might be located outside gsm coverage area, but you are in need of sms send/receive functionality.

You may have multiple sim cards, but want to access them from centralized location.

You might want to setup your own sms-gateway for sending/receiving sms over internet.

You might have remotely deployed sensors sending the data via sms, and you want to collect all sms data from a central gateway.

There might be many other reasons why someone would deploy their SIM card remotely, but whatever you decide to do with this kind of setup, ensure that your SIM card is deployed at a safe and secure location to avoid possible misuse.In simple words, this solution allows you to keep your SIM card connected to the internet and you can access it from your xmpp-client(or google-hangout) using your handheld mobile device.You need following items to prepare this setup:

SDCard image(download it from here, RBox is an open source project hosted on github)

Raspberry pi B or B+

Micro or full size SDCard

Huawei E173 USB 3G stick

Sim card(ensure that SIM is not locked with pin)

5V/2A power supply.

Two google(or jabber) accounts(one for you, second for your raspi)

Solution shown above, uses Huawei e173 USB 3G Modem connected to your Raspberry pi B+ and further on Raspi is connected to internet via home router. Here you can find the details about preparing the SDCard. If everything goes well, you shall see raspi being online on your android xabber app(or on your google-hangout). Send "Help" chat message and the raspi will reply will list of supported commands.

You will notice that when RBox is booted without USB-3G-stick, sms/sim related commands from the "Help" list will be missing because of missing USB-3G-stick hardware.

Before switching on the setup, ensure that password-unlocked SIM card is inserted into USB-3G-stick and a 2Amp capable 5V power supply shall be used.

Note: Ensure that both the google(or jabber) accounts are known to each other by authorizing the contact, you have to do this separately on your PC before switching ON the raspi.